I don't know what it means to wish people a Happy Pesach this year, we're living the closest circumstances to its origins in a lifetime. But I hope everybody, both Jew and everyone with us in spirit today, has new appreciation for all this's meaning. As important as the High Holidays are, tonight is Judaism's root: that a higher power, whomever that power is, heard our suffering, and this divine incarnation set about the task of delivering us from it. The task still seems insurmountable, and once we were delivered, the real work began. As the Tanakh shows, it is an unfinished work, and perhaps meant to be incomplete. Rather, the work always continues to this day and millennia hereafter. The literal meaning of Israel is 'he who wrestles with God'. No matter what many teach, if there is a god, he clearly does not want us to submit to his will, and there is no anointed messiah who speaks for him or her or them or us or it with any more authority than each of us do ourselves. To wrestle and struggle with the meaning of being is Judaism's true meaning, and everything else is an impediment, detracting from the potential meanings of life rather than adding to them. It's up to each of us in this chaotic world to find our own meaning and add our brief chapter to meaning's long story, just as the people before us had to. We are all a collective, and we are all individuals within it, and within that tension, meaning is found. More later no doubt, but in the meantime:
Chag Sameach, Gut Yontif, A Zissen Pesach, oo'Moadim l'Simcha,
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment